Playland is opening for 2012 this weekend so a look through the City of Vancouver Archives to find old amusement park photos seemed in order. 1929 – Entrance gate to the Vancouver Exhibition and Happyland on Renfrew. VPL#: 7925. Photographer: Leonard Frank. 1939 – Fair rides. Archives item# CVA 99 – 3131. Photographer: Stuart Thomson. […]

99 years ago, on April 16, 1913, Athletic Park was dedicated on Hemlock and West 5th. 1915 – Opening Day vs Victoria by the City of Vancouver Archives on Flickr. Archives item# PAN N14B. Photographer: WJ Moore. Chuck Davis writes: “The park was built by Bob Brown, who would come to be known as Mr. […]

I love stepping under the canopy of Stanley Park‘s forest trails, detouring from the concrete paths of the Sea Wall and surrounding thoroughfares. A few years ago I profiled the origins of several Stanley Park Trail Names including Merilees, Rawlings, Tatlow, Thompson, and Tisdall. Tourism Vancouver recently launched their ultimate guide to Stanley Park (useful […]

Look at an image of Vancouver before the 1990s and you’ll notice a very different landscape. Apartment towers have sprouted up at a rate of 3,000 units per year, which is 1,000 more annually than twenty years ago. Moving away from brick and stone, transforming into a city of glass. Apartment-dwellers outnumber those in row […]

Vancouver is only going on 126 years old but despite its infancy compared to most other world-class cities, it had a community that supported the arts right off the bat. I dug around the Vancouver Archives to find evidence of everything from Vancouver’s vibrant vaudeville days to its fanatical film-going culture, in neighbourhood theatres to […]